How the Democrats can win
Houtopia, a Bayou City blogger, offered this comment to my sourpuss post about why Chris Bell lost. I am going to publish it here, because I think it is very smart, without being right.
Mostly I agree that this race was lost for Bell the moment the Austin district court judge ruled Simmons could stay on the ballot. I know the D Party Chair complained loudly about this maneuver and other stacking of the deck against Bell in the runoff (part of his job, I suppose), but that’s life in the rough and tumble world of politics. Them that’s in charge makes the rules, and Ds would do the same if the shoe was on the other foot.
SD 17 still tilts Republican, particularly in a runoff situation like this one, so winning this was always going to be an uphill battle for Bell. The fact is, it is more difficult to turn out Democratic base voters, many of whom tend to be of modest income and low-information, than it is GOP voters, particularly with nothing else on the ballot.
With these marginal voters, one needs a highly organized, aggressive field effort, with a no-nonsense pocketbook issues message — E.g., thanks to the status quo in Austin, your light bill has gone through the roof, your kids can’t get health care, and forget about ever being able to afford college — that is relevant in their daily lives. That’s no small task.
Trouble is, many consultants don’t like to do field. It’s hard work, difficult to manage, and there’s no money in it for them. Much simpler to crank out a mail piece (which is pretty much a waste of money with marginal voters), and be done with it. But it ain’t gonna get you many votes.
Democrats in Texas will be successful in districts like these and at the statewide level when they can finally engage enough of these marginal voters to turn out. The good news is, there are more than enough of them in this state to get there. The bad news is, convincing enough of them that civic engagement and voting are important is tough sledding.
It’s going to be a while yet.
* * * *
My comment:
I agree with almost everything in here, particularly Houtopia’s insight into the consultant world, and his assessment that “it’s going to be awhile yet.” But I disagree that the Democrats need to concentrate on engaging the marginal voter. That has been the Democratic mantra ever since I got interested in politics. It’s never going to work. The marginal voter just doesn’t have enough of a stake in the political process to be persuaded that his vote will make a difference in his life. If there are any hard and fixed rules in American politics that I believe in, they are (1) the same people always vote, and (2) show me a party that casts its lot with attracting new voters and I’ll show you a losing party. Even Obama could not change these truths. The youth vote increased by just one point, from 17% to 18% of the electorate.
The voters the Democrats should be concentrating on are those disaffected Republicans who have turned away from the party in large numbers because they have no affinity for a religious-based conservatism and the social issues that it espouses. The winning position in American politics is economic conservative/social liberal. This was the position from which Bill Clinton was elected president twice, in spite of…well, you know what it was in spite of. There ought to be a race going on in American politics for the first party to get to this position. I don’t see how the Republican party can ditch the social conservatives, so the Democrats have the advantage here. If they can be a credible moderate party, they can isolate the Republicans on the far right of the political spectrum. But idiots like Nancy Pelosi, who has already drawn the line in the sand about the White House not trying to ally with the congressional blue dogs, think that the whole world is like California. Oh yes, there’s one immutable rule in politics. The liberals always blow it.
Tagged: chris bell, sd17l, texas democrats.
Joe White says:
The winning position in American politics is economic conservative/social liberal. [...] There ought to be a race going on in American politics for the first party to get to this position.
There already is a party with that position, but the Libertarians don’t seem to garner much support. While the D’s are champions government noninterference in some private matters, in others (eg smoking, gun ownership), they are just as authoritarian as the R’s, and neither seems interested at the moment in anything economically conservative.
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houtopia says:
I should disclose that one of the hats I wear is that of consultant. My posting was not intended to disparage the consultant class as whole, nor any in particular; rather they are simply my observations as someone who works in the business.
I disagree, Paul, that pursuing the marginal voter is a waste of time and money. While you may never yield enormous gains in participation, you can get the vote up some, which in some races is the difference between winning and losing. Persuading independents and disaffected Republicans is important, and is a task made easier by the governance failures of the Republicans at the state and national levels, but it is not sufficient.
For Democrats to become successful in Texas, they must work both persuadables and the base. At the statewide level, there must be a significant investment in improving Hispanic participation — not just in the Valley, but in the major urban areas (the state’s largest Hispanic population is in the Houston area, not the Valley), and even places like West Texas that are becoming more Hispanic.
For those who say it can’t be done, one need only look at the Obama campaign’s efforts in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico — 3 states that went for Bush in 2004, where efforts yielded a significant increase in Hispanic participation, and where Obama won in 2008.
It can be done in Texas. It will take resources (spent wisely, not wasted as is so often the case), time and a helluva lot of work.
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Pat says:
Mr. Burka-
A couple arguments in the opposite direction.
Regarding young voters: the relevant ratio isn’t [Youth Voters/All Voters], its [No. of Youth Voters in 2008/No. of Youth Voters in 2004]. There was a big increase in turnout across the board this year, including in the youth vote. I wouldn’t write off the youth vote for the reason that older folks turned out too, thus driving down the youths’ proportion of all votes cast. That said, heck yes–the darned kids have a lot of room for improvement.
Regarding Nancy Pelosi: wait and see. I think her comments were directed a lot more towards Rahm Emanuel than the national media lets on. Not long after 2006, people were talking up Rahm as a future Speaker. And now he’s the palace mayor. So can you blame Pelosi for asserting control over her own branch of government? Rahm helped put a lot of people in office and in committee chairmanships back in 2006. That’s a LOT of political capital. But he also has a history of brashness and one of stepping on toes. So Pelosi’s comments were perhaps a shot across the bow reminding Rahm to remember his place, which is most decidedly not “Speaker of the House.”
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paulburka Reply:
December 21st, 2008 at 10:16 am
You bet I can blame Nancy Pelosi. She is dying to pass the liberal agenda. That is not in Obama’s interest. It’s not in the Democratic party’s interest. She should be doing everything she can to get on the Obama team. Instead, she wants to lay down the law to them. Do you know who the last person to do this was? Tom DeLay. He told Bush, “You can forget about being a uniter not a divider. That’s not how we do things up here.” How did that work out? One of the reasons that Rahm Emanuel was named chief of staff, in my opinion, was that if he remained as Whip, he could not influence Pelosi, but as chief of staff, he could insist that she follow the White House’s lead. What is eventually likely to happen, if Pelosi insists on having her way, is that she and the House will lose influence with the White House, and the Democratic Senate, which is forced by its rules to engage in compromise, will gain in influence.
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Phillip Martin Reply:
December 22nd, 2008 at 11:41 am
That crazy liberal Congress that wants to increase funding for stem cell research, expand SCHIP, allow California to their own CAFE standards, pass a stimulus package and a comprehensive climate change legislation and invest in internet structuring across the country.
Thank God Rahm Emmanuel and Barack Obama don’t want to anything like that.
Ahhhhh!!!!!!!!!
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The Game says:
I would say the overwhelming majority of regular people i talk to about politics describe themselves as economic conservatives/social liberals. They don’t like the fact that their hard-earned tax dollars go to schools and governments that, while not necessarily wasting the money, use the money on programs that they and their children never benefit from. Yet they are so personally turned off by religious conservatives that they don’t want to be part of that group.
Paul is exactly right on this point.
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Anon says:
Re: economic conservative/social liberal … As much as I fall into this category, it’s simply not true that the average voter does.
The average voter wants a solution they can parrot in three sentences or less and they want to have an opinion on how their neighbor should live their life. That’s not economic conservative/social liberal. Because government is offering the solution, that’s economics liberal/social conservative.
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Drought Conditions says:
Wow, for once I agree 100% with Paul. Obama was able to win by a good margin due to his charisma and top notch campaign, Bush’s unpopularity, and McCain’s self destruction. It worked for him, and he’ll probably be re-elected, but if Dems want to stay dominant for the long term, they oughta…well, listen to Paul, actually.
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A2Z says:
Re: The Game @ 5:42
I think I’m confused. You say that economic conservatives/social liberals “don’t like the fact that their hard-earned tax dollars go to schools and governments that, while not necessarily wasting the money, use the money on programs that they and their children never benefit from.” So by your definition, economic conservatives prefer spending money on programs that benefit them personally, correct? But if these folks are also socially liberal, wouldn’t they support spending money on programs that benefit the greater good, like education and government? I believe that for many ec/sl’s, the major economic issue is blatant government waste – pork, subsidies, earmarks, etc.
For those of us who straddle the fence – who vote for a Republican here and a Democrat there – it’s not rocket science. Give us a statesman – someone who has integrity and brains minus partisanship and ideology – and we’ll vote for them. The swing contingent of voters may never be “loyal” to a particular party…they’re too independent for that, and they don’t like to be labeled.
Restoring dominance is not about concentrating on particular voters at all. The secret formula is this: consistently run strong, decent candidates, and the swing/disaffected voters are yours.
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Anonymous says:
What the Dems did this year to win the so called “swing” voters and “disaffected” Republicans had much more to do with the collapse of the economy than anything else. On social issues, Dems have simply done a better job of marketing their ideas in such a way as to cast themselves as benevolent and altruistic and the Republicans as ogres and theocrats. The truth is that most voters do not share the vision of the Democrats social liberalism and its attendant consequences.
The strategy for Republicans should not be to run away from their stances on social issues– they simply need to to a better job of reaching new voters and independents with clarity about what they believe rather than allow the draconian caricatures that Dems (and even some Republicans)create who loathe the idea that people of faith refuse to abandon the public square.
Republicans should develop quick response capability through cutting edge technological media, a tactic the Dems have honed to a fine art (and where Republicans lag terribly). Every time the Dems try to use a canard such as “Republicans have banned funding for stem cell research”, Republicans should be able to remind voters of where Dems really stand on issues of protecting innocent life, such as the disgusting efforts by Obama to defeat the Infant Born Alive Act while an Illinois Senator. Had the Republicans played their cards right on this issue, they could have used Obama’s cool exterior against him and portrayed him as the callous and cynical politico that he is, but they didn’t and they missed an opportunity.
This will be a difficult task in an age where the media, nearly six weeks after the election, thinks it is important to tell us that Sara Palin’s daughter’s fiance’s mother MIGHT be guilty of a drug charge,but seems satisfied that Obama is untouched by the multitude of scandals that have emerged involving political operators from the Chicago machine who were central to his success.
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Anonymous says:
Paul,
I know you’re of the opinion that Democratic party gains are only because of Republican shortcomings, but really, you don’t just stumble into control of the WH, Congress and Senate without doing something right. I get it, you don’t like Pelosi. But she and the DCCC ran some smart races in marginal districts (with good, well recruited candidates) and gave them the latitude to run the campaigns they needed to in order to win.
And this goes for Texas too. Going into the 2004 election cycle, would you have said that the Democrats would be 2 seats away from a majority in the House by 2008? There are plenty of talented consultants in the Democratic party. I’m not saying the bench is as deep as it should be, but it seems to me it’s the R’s that keep running the same cookie-cutter campaigns with limited results.
You’re hating on the Democratic House Caucus leadership is also misguided. Think about this. Would Solomon, Keffer, Pitts, etc. (all good legislators I presume you respect) be in a position to challenge the sitting Republican speaker without some sort of confidence on their part in the Democratic House leadership? And BTW, a winning record is a winning record.
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Anonymous says:
SD 17 could have turned out different IF the D’s would have picked a better candidate. Look at Bell’s web site – he looks like he is running for City Council in Cali – not Texas.
The Bell campaign was run terribly and the Huffman campaign was one of the few Republican races run in some time that concentrated on the ground game. Yes – they had a lot of money to spend on tv and mail but that was most done to get her positives back up after the beating she took from Blakemore.
End of the day she won because Bell is a terrible candidate and Huffman ran a superior race…
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Anon Reply:
December 23rd, 2008 at 3:43 pm
That is so ridiculous. The Republicans love to call Chris Bell names: perennial loser, bad candidate, etc, etc. They seem to forget that he was serving in congress when his district was jerked out from under him and now cry because he continues to fight. He lost this race because it was a Republican district, not because of any great campaign by Joan Huffman. Her TV ad made her son look mentally impaired and was disturbing and if you listened to her, you could tell she knew absolutely nothing about state government. Meanwhile, Bell seemed to know the issues backwards and forward. Democrats just weren’t going to come back out. So kudos to republicans for getting enough folks back and too bad for Texas that we won’t have someone in the senate who knows what the heck he’s doing.
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Pat says:
To Mr. Burka @ 10:16am-
THAT is the kind of insight that has made me a regular reader of your work for about ten years.
Now if I could only find a solution for international jet lag when I run out of melatonin…
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Floozikins says:
Hay una pieza en el Dallas Morning News que da una imagen instantánea de la autoproclamada República desaparición afectados.
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/DN-dealers_20bus.ART.State.Edition2.4a35cfe.html
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asmith says:
anon:1025,
Once Simmons was in the race, Bell had no chance. Hochberg or Ellen Cohen would have been better candidates, but they didn’t want to give up their seats.
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Anon Reply:
December 23rd, 2008 at 3:47 pm
If you have seen the initial polling that was done, that’s extremely humorous that you would suggest that either Ellen or Scott would have been better candidates. Bell’s numbers were off the charts and the only way they could stop him was with one of the dirtiest tricks most of us have ever seen. So, as Dems, you’d be wise to channel your anger toward the mud wallowing R’s instead of at the candidate who was willing to step up.
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Kenneth D. Franks says:
We that actually ran as Democrats in 2008 paid our filing fees in 2007 long before the Democratic Candidate for President was decided. If the national party would support us instead of using our resources and people for out of state races we could be a two party state in the next cycle.
We have diversity and inclusion in our party. The Republicans have Right Wing Radicals, Radical Right Wingers, and a few Moderates.
By the way people talk you would think that Texas has been a Republican state forever instead of just two Republican Governors in a row, one elected and then moving on to give Texas a bad name even though he isn’t even a native. The other who inherited the position, not doing much of anything good for the state in my opinion,and becoming more unpopular every year.
We want our guns and low taxes on both sides of the isle here.
We don’t want more toll roads, the Trans-Texas Corridor and tax swaps that are regressive and punish the working class and what middle class families that are left.
Two more house seats, a Democratic Speaker or Moderate Republican Speaker and Texas is a two party state again. Fair non-partisan redistricting would be nice and a couple state-wide wins would seal the deal.
Just part of my Christmas list for 2010 and 2012.
K.D.F.
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poindexter says:
Paul I don’t think Pelosi can go too far to the lefy with the Congress she has. The Democrats picked up the majority by winning rural seats. Pelosi is smart enough to know that there are a lot of liberal issues (like guns) that she can’t win on, and if she could force the Rural Democrats to vote on she’d lose her majority and her job.
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B/CS Observer says:
Paul, if economic conservatism and social liberalism was a winning combo, the Libertarians would be the dominant party.
The real winner has benn and always will be social conservatism and economic liberalism. It’s what the Democrats sold from 1932 to 1968 and what their most successful candidiates before Obama (Clinton, Carter) tried to sell.
Obama is trying to hold the middle on social issues, which is all he has to do. Save for discrimination, FDR and LBJ didn’t get involved in issues like abortion.
Obama can do absolutley nothing about abortion, keep all ther NARAL nutjobs, and maybe gain a few social conservative votes becuase they see he is not broadening access to abortion.
Or he can sign FOCA and motivate a bunch of social conservatives to oppose him at every turn and gain the priase of a group that would vote for him anyways.
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Anonymous says:
“The real winner has benn and always will be social conservatism and economic liberalism. It’s what the Democrats sold from 1932 to 1968 and what their most successful candidiates before Obama (Clinton, Carter) tried to sell.”
This doesn’t make sense. JFK was surely not an “economic liberal” wahtever that is. He cut marginal tax rates probably more than any president in history. I suppose that LBJ was an “economic liberal” with his Great Society, but I would not consider him a particularly successful president. Carter was an abject failure without question, which brings us to Clinton.
The economic success of the Clintons was because they actually did very little to hinder the economic machine that took off because of the peace dividend (thank you Reagan and Bush I),the opening of markets in the former Soviet bloc countries and the tech boom. Clinton was not an economic liberal in any sense of the word.
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JK says:
“Fair non-partisan redistricting would be nice…”. Yeah, and it would’ve been nice in 1992. But Martin Frost showed the GOP how it was done, and he was hoist by his own petard. When the GOP 2003 redistricting has lasted 12 years like Frost’s did, we’ll call it even.
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celebritygossip says:
Celebrity Gossip Oprah Winfrey believes that Michael Jackson was profoundly lonely, based on the interview of the King of Pop that she took in 1993.
In the interview, the pop legend had opened up about everything from his plastic surgery to the abuse he allegedly suffered at the hands of his father Joe and his love interest.
According to the Mirror, he had said: ?My purpose, I think, is to give in the best way I can.? Recollecting the confessions, Oprah said: ?I was surprised he was willing to go that far. I see now how profoundly lonely he was. I heard and sensed it then but I didn?t feel how lonely he was.?
She also said that there was a ?sense of fear and sadness? when Jackson talked about his childhood. On being asked how he would like to be perceived, Jackson had answered: ?I just simply want to be loved wherever I go.?
Read the rest of the article on http://www.jackzap.com
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